Florida’s Cattle Wars

The fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, which gave the Union control of the Mississippi River, not only cut the Confederacy in half, but it cut off the supply of Texas cattle from reaching hungry troops to the east (and federal blockaders patrolling the Gulf of Mexico prevented delivery by ship). Consequently, the Confederacy increasingly looked to a seemingly unlikely source, Florida, as a source of beef for its armies.

Florida’s cattle were the first in North America. Since beef livestock were not native to the Western Hemisphere, it is believed they were brought over as early as 1521 by expeditions of Ponce de Leon. Ranching began before the 17th century around St. Augustine, which is the oldest city in the United States. When Florida became a territory in 1821, it was a frontier plentifully stocked with wild cattle. By the eve of the Civil War, the state was second only to Texas in the per capita value of livestock in the South. The central and southern parts of the peninsula were open range. Exports of live cattle to Cuba became an important business in the 1850s, but were curtailed during the early part of the Civil War by the Union blockade and official – but sometimes violated – Confederate export prohibitions.

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Fighting over a stolen cattle herd in Civil War-era Florida.Credit Florida State Archives

Indeed, with a semi-wild herd approaching 700,000, Florida had almost five times as many cattle as people. South Florida was cow country: Except for Key West and Tampa, only about 3,500 of the state’s 140,000 residents lived south of present day Disney World. By the end of 1863 the region accounted for 75 percent of the beef cattle leaving the state.

Still, getting cattle from Florida’s peninsula to Confederate armies outside the state was impossible without experienced drovers. The area was a honeycomb of seacoast and swamp. Entire herds could wander aimlessly or vanish within an hour in the trackless region. Even where the ground was firm, abundant saw grass could cut man and beast to ribbons, while the heat and humidity promoted malaria and yellow fever. Snakes, hurricanes, feral hogs and panthers could decimate a herd. The state’s few railroads were mostly near its northern border and none connected to lines in Georgia.

South Florida cattle drives took about a month to cover the 300 to 400 miles to Georgia railheads. Government plans to remove rails from the Florida Railroad Company’s trans-peninsula line and use them to lay a connection to the Georgia network were legally resisted by its owners. (Paradoxically, the company’s chief stockholders were Northerners. Among them was the New York shipping magnate Marshall Roberts and Edward Dickerson, a patent attorney, inventor and business rival to designer of the Monitor, John Ericsson.) The Florida Railroad Company was ably represented in the state by minority shareholder and former Senator David Yulee. Through various legal challenges he delayed removal of the iron, and a Florida-to-Georgia rail link was not completed until a month before Appomattox.

Clearly, South Florida’s cattle represented a strategic weak spot for the Confederacy. During December 1863 Union general Daniel Woodbury, who commanded federal occupation troops on the island of Key West, seized Fort Myers, on Florida’s western coast, for use as a base to raid rebel cattle drives. The fort had been abandoned in the late 1850s when it was the southernmost settlement along the Gulf coast of the mainland. In addition to hardy pioneers attracted by free ranging cattle, the vast frontier was a haven for rustlers, deserters, runaway slaves, draft evaders and others seeking to avoid the restrictions of an unwanted government. General Woodbury believed such men might be induced to join the Union Army.

He wasn’t just speculating: Before the occupation of Fort Myers, groups of such “loyalists” did live in the bush. Though they were secretly supplied with Yankee weapons, the historian Robert Taylor wrote that “Some bands became little more than bandits who raided indiscriminately. They attacked, looted, and burned local farms with the horrible ease that often comes to men grown callous in war.”

Since the federal garrisons at Key West and elsewhere would pay for cattle with federal currency instead of less valued Confederate scrip, General Woodbury envisioned Fort Myers as a trading and export center to draw herds away from the rebels — and toward any paying customers, including Cuban buyers. To accommodate the necessary ships, the general built a long wharf at Fort Myers.

Refugees fleeing Confederate conscription began to arrive within days of the Fort Myers occupation. Military-aged males coalesced into an irregular force of Florida Rangers, but were soon incorporated into a new regiment, the Second Florida (Union) Cavalry. It eventually numbered more than 750 men. By the early spring of 1864, Union infantry reinforcements landed, including a group of African-Americans.

During the final year of the war companies affiliated with Fort Myers participated in numerous cattle raids as well as more formal expeditions. One was the temporary occupation of Tampa and destruction of its defenses at Fort Brooke; another was an attempt to capture Florida’s capital at Tallahassee, which was turned back at the battle of Natural Bridge a month before Appomattox.

In March 1864 James McKay, who was in charge of Confederate cattle procurement in South Florida, wrote the state’s top commissary officer to say that he would be unable to secure cattle from his district in the next season unless the Confederate Army challenged incursions from Fort Myers. A result was the formation of the First Battalion, Florida Special Cavalry, a battalion of drovers commonly known as the Cow Cavalry or Cattle Guard Battalion. Their job was to renew the cattle drives, defend against Union cattle forays and eventually capture or force the abandonment of Fort Myers.

Maj. Charles Munnerlyn of Georgia was given command. His political connections obtained earlier as a Confederate congressman proved valuable. For example, he convinced a personnel-stingy Gen. Joe Johnston, who commanded one of the biggest rebel armies, to provide a core of volunteers with cowhand experience. Since Cow Cavalry members were exempt from the military draft, the major received applicants from all over Florida. But he was selective, because inexperienced cowboys were worse than useless. Eventually, the Cow Cavalry consisted of nine companies totaling 800 men, and was active from Fort Myers to Georgia. By patrolling a 300-mile stretch of dusty trails and open range, the Cow Cavalry enabled cattle drives to be renewed.

By October 1864 the general Confederate manpower shortage was so severe that the leadership decided to redeploy the Special Cavalry Battalion to Georgia or Virginia. But Commissary-General Lucius Northrop successfully appealed to Secretary of War James Seddon, writing that “nowhere in the Confederacy can services of these few detailed men be so valuable as in the present organization.”

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By February 1865 the success of the Cow Cavalry led to rumors that Fort Myers might soon be abandoned by the Union. Leading about 200 members of selected Cow Cavalry companies, Maj. William Footman decided to give the approximate 300 Yankees remaining in the fort a push. Although Footman originally planned a surprise attack, after capturing five soldiers outside the compound who told him about the presence of women and children inside, he decided to send a surrender demand. The demand was refused. The resulting, southernmost “battle” of the Civil War east of the Mississippi, evolved into a long-range skirmish with small arms and a few light artillery, resulting in few casualties on either side. Unable to take the fort by force, the rebels retreated into the bush, but federals unilaterally abandoned the place a few weeks later.

Fort Myers was not long abandoned. The following year permanent settlers used lumber from the vacant structures to build new homes. Simultaneously, nearby Punta Rassa became the northern terminus of a telegraph line to Havana that facilitated commercial transactions, and the area became a leading export station for cattle. Less than 20 years later, Thomas Edison bought waterfront acreage for a winter home. Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone joined him when the three emerged as some of the leading American industrialists in the early 20th century.

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One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.